All the livelong night
This weekend, I worked the Freudianly named “graveyard shift” at Chesterfield hospital. Three nights, 9pm until 9am, Friday, Saturday, Sunday.
Whilst a great time to get some real hands-on experience, there is a key problem in working nights. It goes thus:
- Most of us are not naturally nocturnal.
- Most of us have jobs in the day time.
- Night shifts usually only have a day’s grace between day shift and night shift.
- It takes more than one day to completely upend your circadian rhythm.
- Therefore, you always feel completely, exhaustedly, hungover-jetlagged-coma-after-a-trainwreck tired.
There are two methods for attempting this changover. One is to try and stay up as late as possible the night before, sleep all day, and go to work (hopefully) refreshed. I tried this. The result was that I was so tired on the first shift that I started having visual hallucinations about 4am, attempted to wear a commode around 5, and woke up the next morning completely naked in the middle of the M45.
The other method is to sleep normally the night before, stay up all day, and have a two hour nap before the start of the shift. My SHO used this method. The result was that he became so tired that he began to have paranoid delusional beliefs around 3am, attempted to order the demolition of the hospital library about 6, and woke up the next morning on a ferry to Bergen, with a new tattoo. Of the Queen. On his face.
Obviously there’s a bit of exaggeration there, and neither of us actually developed first rank symptoms of schizophrenia, but we were very tired. Aside from this, the weekend was actually fairly enjoyable. There’s a bit less red tape and paperwork on the night shift, and less distractions.
One highlight was a tired A&E clerking on Friday night from another doctor, who had written “Patient is a resident in a residential home” twice in three paragraphs. Some would say that this is not particularly useful information, even when written twice. The doctor had failed to mention that the woman was profoundly deaf, and severely demented. Which would you rather know?
My most memorable event of the weekend came at about 5:30am Monday morning. I was hungry, so I went to the vending machine to get a packet of crisps.
5:30 I put in my 45p, and selected some Prawn Cocktail Walkers. They fell out of the holder, and got stuck halfway down the machine.
5:31 I got annoyed, and tried to shake the machine. A lot. It didn’t work, the crisps remained stuck.
5:32 Rammed the machine again, and another packet of crisps fell out, Cheese and Onion this time. It also got lodged. Right next to my other packet. Nudged it again, to no avail.
5:34 Tried ringing the vending machine company, asking for a refund of my 45p. Oddly enough, no one there when its barely dawn.
5:36 Decided I *needed* crisps, so used my might again. This time a Capri-Sun fell out.
5:39 Having drained the last drop of the Capri-Sun in a contemplative manner, I hit upon an rational plan of action – purchasing the chocolate bar directly above the crisps will cause it to fall, thereby dislodging my crisps!
5:40 The Kit Kat chunky holder turned, and then the chocolate bar twisted out, began to fall and then… got stuck in the mechanism.
5:42 I finished screaming, and decided to whack the machine again.
5:43 Still whacking.
5:44 Another Capri-Sun fell out, but still neither crisp packet nor chocolate bar is released from the vending machine’s iron grip…
5:45 After a final heave, the Kit Kat fell, dislodging both packets, and I left the machine clutching half a newsagent’s in triumph. (Feeling a little guilty at my windfall, I later went to the reception desk in the hospital, who congratulated me on my honesty, but told me to keep the food!)
There ends my summation. At 9:15am Monday I left the hospital after 36 hours of attendance, with mild tooth decay and a mite more experience as recompense. Plus I think I’ll get paid at some point too, but right now I’m more excited about the Capri-Sun.
NB. I am thoroughly committed to being a great doctor, which includes respecting patient confidentiality. All information about patients on my website is anonymised, and often altered drastically so that whilst it still makes a good anecdote, it is unrelated in sex, time, location, age and/or ailment from the original facts.
MedRevise 4.0 is here!
After a month of live beta testing, the time has come to officially launch the new version of MedRevise.co.uk to the world at large. To find out the full story, read on…
Nearly five years ago, I arrived at medical school. And I realised I needed to make some notes. But I also wanted to use my computer, and so keeping them in order was important.
And then I realised I could use a wiki. For those of you who don’t know, a wiki is “A collaborative website which can be directly edited using only a web browser, often by anyone with access to it“. So I bought a domain, www.medrevise.co.uk, which I started to use for my revision.
As time went on, there were more and more notes online, and soon I met my friend Raj, who found that note making on MedRevise was his ideal revision technique too. Over the years the site has grown, and gets quite a lot of visitors: according to our hosting stats, last month (May) we had more than 13,000 visitors, and 112,000 page views. Needless to say, that makes me feel pretty happy!
Anyway, this weekend, MedRevise Version 4.0 is launched, notable changes including:
- Appearance: A new colourful theme. My first foray into Mediawiki theming, which was a pain in the bum, but worth it in the end.
- About: A sexy new “About” page, and a few tweaks to the front page.
- Twitter: A link to our twitter feed.
- Adverts: For the first time, adverts – hopefully to pay some of the costs of the hosting, time maintaining it, etc.
- See it now, in the screenshot on the right!
So yes, some exciting changes. Find out more for yourself at http://www.medrevise.co.uk.
Many many plans
So, I have finished my exams. And that leaves me a few short weeks to tackle a variety of projects. Taking inspiration from Lifehacker, I am making a list on here of stuff I am aiming to achieve.
- Get healthy: The next 7 weeks, my first hour of each day is exercise. Keep me accountable on this one please!
- A new YesIts.Us website: The Lowry Family homepage, in full technicolor. Need to update this, and create a blog for my darling wife.
- Install Windows 7 on my PC: I only bought it 5 months ago, and already I feel I should probably install it!
- Make VictorandRachel.co.uk: A wedding site for my housemate.
- Do some more work on Cutting Edge: my large corporate project has been put on hold, but that’s no excuse not to do anything on it.
- Finish CrookesOnline.co.uk: Let’s get the Crookes homepage up and running for everyone!
- A new NamesNotNumbers.info: Everyone’s favourite charity, soon getting a new website. Design by committee – the best way!
- Get my server set up: It’s working fine, but its time to get that software running properly, with regular backups, and every PC in the house being served!
- Redesign ChristianPunks.co.uk: This site is no longer an active portal, so let’s make it a little more fresh and helpful!
- Start a peer reviewed journal: Coming soon – The Online Journal of Medicine (also known as OnJoM).
- Get tagging: Put post tags on every post on my blog.
- Sleep.
- Walk the dogs.
Anyone else think this risks burnout? I will take regular breaks, don’t worry! And now I will leave you with what must be the world’s best CV – click the picture below to find out more…
MedRevise – an awesome medical revision wiki
This site has been put together by some medical student from Sheffield University – but its open for everyone. Its about half finished, so get involved – using the stuff that’s there now, and adding the rest. Death to textbooks! Hope you guys enjoy checking out the site!
Photo Two – Proving Vets Wrong
The following post is from a series of emails I wrote to my girlfriend at the time, whilst on a trip to Africa. She is now my wife, so I did something right.
Was talking to mum, about how stupid Heze is, chewing off her own feet. She remembered a random disease, from her medical school days, called “Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome”. The pic is taken from her old uni textbook.
Here’s an extract from another bit of the text:
I think that describes our young doggy pretty well, doesn’t it?
